I Thought Libertarians were for Freedom of Speech

So, why are the libertarians on “the website that shall not be named” arguing in favor of the tech companies colluding to deplatform Alex Jones? I do believe there is a difference between a baker or other small business refusing service to a customer and a social media platform who advertises to be a public forum. These companies didn’t make the content, all they do is allow the content a platform to present it.

Anyway, I am confused as I thought libertarians would see the difference. Also one who says they are for Freedom of Speech, might actually be a WEE bit concerned to see these social media platforms collude to wipe clean any trace of ideas they believe to be “offensive” meanwhile allowing other content which is arguably worse content to remain. Just saying.

Bryan G. Stephens:
This is 100% what will happen. They are already doing this with banks and gun dealers. Bitchute already got attacked this way. This is happening, this will happen. The Left will drive the right into hiding.

Well, that was quick. In today’s Washington Free Beacon, we learn that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has shut down the hosting server for CodeIsFreeSpeech.com because they refused to remove the plans for the Defense Distributed 3D printed weapons. This did not take the site down because, in the words of Brandon Combs, who runs the site, “We were already moving so we were already starting on an AWS instance and we had already started migrating all of our stuff. We have multiple servers now. Their takedown literally said ‘unwanted content.’ I guess if unwanted content is enough to get an AWS instance shutdown then I don’t know how Amazon is going to sell that to their customers but we were already moving.”

Combs adds:

It was humans involved with Amazon just like in Facebook. This is not an algorithm-based issue, they were making human policy decisions. And the issue at Amazon is not done yet. It’s been escalated, and frankly I think many enterprise-clients view this as troubling because [it’s one thing] if you have legal speech that is simply protected and somebody files a complaint, but if it’s just as simple as saying “unwanted content” to take down an instance at AWS [Amazon Web Services], then nobody’s safe.

It is vexatious that “unwanted content” is the reason. That is very subjective and is chilling. It means the person better want the same things as the person making the decisions or else. And with the sliding scale of what constitutes unwanted content no one is safe.

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

They can ban you from Twitter regardless of your behaviour on Twitter, based upon things you do elsewhere. For example, if they deem to you run a “hate site” because you criticise mass third-world immigration on your own self-hosted blog, they can cancel your Twitter account even if all you post on Twitter are recipes and pictures of your cat.

They can ban you from Twitter regardless of your behaviour on Twitter, based upon things you do elsewhere. For example, if they deem to you run a “hate site” because you criticise mass third-world immigration on your own self-hosted blog, they can cancel your Twitter account even if all you post on Twitter are recipes and pictures of your cat.

Well, we all know that National Review won’t be going against that, as they support it 100%

I know Facebook and Apple and YouTube have gotten so big they sometimes seem like the government. But they aren’t. They are private companies that shouldn’t knowingly spread lies and hate. They took a good first step today removing Infowars. Infowars is just the tip of the iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and Youtube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.

It’s nice to see the Dems using the same argument (“private companies”) that many in Conservative, Inc. are using. Don’t worry, National Review, they won’t come for you right away. And when they do, it will be for the good of our democracy. Remember, democracy dies in darkness.

I know Facebook and Apple and YouTube have gotten so big they sometimes seem like the government. But they aren’t. They are private companies that shouldn’t knowingly spread lies and hate. They took a good first step today removing Infowars. Infowars is just the tip of the iceberg of hate and lies that uses sites like Facebook and Youtube to tear our nation apart. These companies must do more than take down one website. The survival of our democracy depends on it.

It’s nice to see the Dems using the same argument (“private companies”) that many in Conservative, Inc. are using. Don’t worry, National Review, they won’t come for you right away. And when they do, it will be for the good of our democracy. Remember, democracy dies in darkness.

If there is a plethora of stories extolling the problems of the president, is there a need to jump on the “band wagon”? For “fairness” sake should everyone pile on. Everyone is biased and want to move their agenda. Most people let their side off. They either defend sometimes the indefensible or choose to not bring the subject up. I think it is wrong to expect a person to play for both teams. In the end, most show which side they are on.

I do believe that their is a need for Refs. Refs have biases too but if things are open and above board these are seen clearly. Without openness they are not and blatant actions ensue. If the rulings are mostly on one team, the Refs are throwing the game. If the Refs are calling technicals for pointing out those inconsistency, they have no integrity.

On August 10th, the Washington Free Beacon reported that on-line commerce vendor Shopify unilaterally terminated Defense Distributed’s on-line store, which had been operating in good standing for more than two years. The store sells a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine which can be used, among other things, for finishing 80% lowers for AR-15s, but in fact is a fully general CNC mill which can be programmed for many other tasks. It is not a weapon, but rather a machine tool. No federal agency or other governmental body has asserted that selling it violates any law. The machining operations it performs can be done with any other CNC or manually-operated mill.

I spoke to Cody Wilson last night and he said he was about to start fundraising for legal challenges to the state-level and federal court attacks on his business. (At this time he has no open issues with the federal BATFE, State Department, or any other federal agency.). There doesn’t seem, at this point, to be much of anything he can do about private companies de-platforming his company.

Defense Distributed has been cash positive for more than a year based upon the sales of the CNC mill and has money in the bank, but will be severely hit by the loss of its on-line store presence and withdrawal of service by payment processors.

Edit: I made this purchase using PayPal. I wonder how long that will be allowed to continue.

E Bay is fed up with paypal, and is switching to a paypal-like system run by a company over in Holland. I’ll post about that later this weekend. (I think the Dutch would be pretty cool about free speech. Anyway at least I hope that is the case.)

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

“evolve” … “off-platform behavior.”

Laura Loomer, a Twitter friend of mine, stated this recently: How is it that @jack is banning people on twitter who he believes are “white supremacicts”, but then he’s totally ok w/ giving a platform to jihadis like Linda Sarsour, Abdul El-Sayed, Nihad Awad, & Siraj Wahhaj? (edit – @jack is the guy who owns twitter or is the CEO.)

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

“evolve” … “off-platform behavior.”

Laura Loomer, a Twitter friend of mine, stated this recently: How is it that @jack is banning people on twitter who he believes are “white supremacicts”, but then he’s totally ok w/ giving a platform to jihadis like Linda Sarsour, Abdul El-Sayed, Nihad Awad, & Siraj Wahhaj? (edit – @jack is the guy who owns twitter or is the CEO.)

It makes no sense how one side gets a pass where the other side gets penalized for doing similar things. Is it racism that causes the disparity?

Twitter is planning to accelerate changes to the company’s speech policies after a backlash from its own employees who want the company to ban right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, responding to a critical tweet from a Twitter engineer, said Wednesday he is “not happy” with Twitter’s current policies, which he said need to “evolve.”

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

“evolve” … “off-platform behavior.”

Laura Loomer, a Twitter friend of mine, stated this recently: How is it that @jack is banning people on twitter who he believes are “white supremacicts”, but then he’s totally ok w/ giving a platform to jihadis like Linda Sarsour, Abdul El-Sayed, Nihad Awad, & Siraj Wahhaj? (edit – @jack is the guy who owns twitter or is the CEO.)

It makes no sense how one side gets a pass where the other side gets penalized for doing similar things. Is it racism that causes the disparity?

Twitter vice president Del Harvey also sent a company-wide email Wednesday pledging to accelerate Twitter’s efforts to crack down on “dehumanizing hate speech,” in the wake of internal “conversations” about Jones.

Harvey noted that Twitter also plans to evaluate whether the company needs to better police “off-platform behavior.”

“evolve” … “off-platform behavior.”

Laura Loomer, a Twitter friend of mine, stated this recently: How is it that @jack is banning people on twitter who he believes are “white supremacicts”, but then he’s totally ok w/ giving a platform to jihadis like Linda Sarsour, Abdul El-Sayed, Nihad Awad, & Siraj Wahhaj? (edit – @jack is the guy who owns twitter or is the CEO.)

It makes no sense how one side gets a pass where the other side gets penalized for doing similar things. Is it racism that causes the disparity?

Identity Poltics is the root of evil in our world now

There is a new and special kind of sacred discrimination that has been grafted into traditional Leftism. Straight white men are to be punished for the historic record of patriarchal tyranny, while all others are to be celebrated, no matter how prone to violence and destructive behaviors they may be.